High days and snow days

Hello crafting pals!

I've cheered up today. This is quite possibly because I've spent ages staring at the word 'JOY' whilst fussy cutting the letters out of card stock! Subliminal brain training! Come and see what I've been making:

CARD ONE

Here's a Christmas card to add to my stash *gives self a pat on the back*. The snowflake is from Stampin' Up's Festive Flurry (retired) and I've given it an ombre look by inking it up with three shades of blue ink. The word Joy comes from another retired Stampin' Up set, Welcome Christmas, and I've always thought it would make a great alphabet set - although preferably with dies!

It was easy cutting the 'j' and the 'y' but the centre of the 'O' was the tricky bit and I had to cut through from the outside. But hey, what are bows for?!! This bit of twine has covered the join rather neatly I think! The letters are popped up on bits of dimensionals, which was quite fiddly, but I like the effect.

CARD TWO

Yes, you get two for the price of one today! While the stamp was out, I made another ombre snowflake. This time, I embellished it simply, with silver liquid pearls and one large gem in the centre.

It's nice and shiny! To offset the shimmer of the snowflake I added a blocky sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks Christmas, again popped up on dimensionals.

CHALLENGES
I took inspiration from some of my favourite challenges today:

The CAS Christmas Challenge is asking for cards featuring the word JOY and Just Us Girls have challenged us to add a bow to our cards, so I'm playing along there with Card One.
I'm linking both cards up with Addicted to CAS, where the code word is Ombre and got me quite excited! I'm also entering both at Addicted to Stamps and More, which is looking for clean and simple cards. Edited to add: Actually, I'm not linking up with ATSAM as the list is closed! Aargh!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
I grew up on the middle of a moor in south west England and we were snowed in every winter. One year, we were snowed in for so long, we had to have food parcels dropped by helicopter! Usually, a landrover would collect all the children from the farms on the moor and take us to a village three miles away from our farm, where a coach would be waiting to take us to school 13 miles further on. If there had been a heavy snowfall, the landrover wouldn't be able to get through, so my father would put chains on the tractor tyres and make every effort to get us to the village. My brother, sister and I would all be perched in the semi-open tractor cab, wearing our school uniforms, being thrown around by the motion of the tractor as it negotiated huge snowdrifts. My goodness, can you imagine what 'Health and Safety' would have to say about it now!!!

Did you have an unusual journey to school? I'd love to hear about it!

Hugs,

Stamping a stack of Christmas cards in minutes!

Hello crafting pals!

It's been a few days since I was able to be creative - and that's a few days too long for me! But today I snatched a bit of time to check out some of my favourite challenges and get myself happily inky. You might want to sit down with a cup of something and a snack to keep your strength up as there are a few cards! Come and see:

There are a few cards here aren't there?! That's because I'm using a smooshing technique which is so quick and easy, it's almost impossible not to stamp a whole bunch of cards in no time at all! Just look at the different patterns in the backgrounds:

When I was thinking about what to make, a shrink-wrapped marketing brochure came through my letter box. *Sighs heavily* But if they are going to send me single-use plastic through the post, it's my duty to use it again! So I dampened the surface with water, added a couple of drops of Marina Mist and Pool Party re-inker, smooshed it about with an acrylic block and dragged some card stock over it to make frosty looking backgrounds!

THE FIRST CARD

For my first card, I cut a circle out of the background and stamped it with a  snowflake from Festive Flurry (Stampin' Up retired) using Pacific Point ink. Then I did a little layering:

You can see it better in this photo - a larger Pool Party circle topped with a strip of ribbon-tailed Navy card stock and then the smooshed and stamped circle. To finish off, I added a thinner white sentiment strip, stamped with a greeting from Uniko's Pure Florals Poinsettia, and a few clear gems.

THE SECOND CARD

My second card uses just a wide strip of the smooshed background stamped with the snowflake again. I loved that patterning at the bottom of the strip, which looked extra icy to me!

I matted the strip onto Navy card stock and attached it off centre to a card base. Again, the card was finished with that beautiful Uniko sentiment and some gems but I also added some white gel pen lines to look like scratches on ice.

THE THIRD CARD

The last card design is the simplest of them all. I cut a smooshed panel just smaller than my card base, stamped it with the snowflake and sponged round the edges to add definition. The same Uniko sentiment was used and another sprinkling of gems (might need to go shopping for gems at this rate!)

I made two of the third card - a prototype to see if I could make it quickly, and then another one which I timed.  Can you see how the pattern on this one is quite different from the one above? The ink had dried up a bit before dragging this card stock through on this last one. Can you guess how long the card took to make? (See answer below!)



I'm linking up with three challenges today:

The first card was made for the Retro Rubber Challenge where there's a great sketch. It's my first time here but I love the idea of giving some love to our older stamps! My retro stamp is from Festive Flurry, released at the end of 2013.

My second card is for 52 Christmas Card Throwdown - I'd forgotten about this challenge, as their email prompts weren't coming through, but that's all been sorted out now and I'm loving joining in with this week's fun Smooshing Technique Challenge.

My third card was made for As You See It, where we've been challenged to Colour It Blue in under 10 minutes. My card came in at just 3 1/2 minutes. Yay! I LOVE these speed challenges!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Well, if you've made it to the end of this post, I'm sure you'd probably rather I didn't start wittering on about other nonsense! I will just say that we've got birthday celebrations coming up at the weekend and I'll have a full house :) and I'll also mention that I've been shopping for stamps - whoopee! More on all that soon...

Thanks for visiting me today. Let me know what you think of all the iciness going on here today won't you!

Hugs,